| "Electric Relaxation" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| SinglebyA Tribe Called Quest | ||||
| from the album Midnight Marauders | ||||
| B-side | "Midnight" | |||
| Released | February 28, 1994 | |||
| Recorded | 1993 | |||
| Genre | Jazz rap, psychedelic rap | |||
| Length | 3:45 (single) 4:04 (album) | |||
| Label | Jive | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Kamaal Fareed, Ronnie Foster, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Malik Taylor | |||
| Producer(s) | A Tribe Called Quest | |||
| A Tribe Called Quest singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Music video | ||||
| "Electric Relaxation"onYouTube | ||||
"Electric Relaxation" is the second single from American hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest's third album, Midnight Marauders (1993). It contains a sample of the song "Mystic Brew" by jazz organist Ronnie Foster.
The track was featured as the opening theme song for The WB's black sitcom The Wayans Bros., for the first two seasons.
The beat of the song was ranked as the third greatest hip-hop beat of all time by Rock the Bells in 2024.[1]
In a conversation with XXL, Phife Dawg revealed that the beat for "Electric Relaxation" was created in his grandmother's basement by Q-Tip:
I just remember coming home from somewhere—my grandmother gave him a key, the whole nine, he used to just go in and do his thing—I came home from some type of trip and I walked in the kitchen, and you know, he's in the basement and you could hear the music coming up, and all I heard was that. I didn't even say hello to my grandmother or whoever was in the house, I was just like, "Hold on!" and went downstairs. "Yo, what the hell is that?!" He was like, "Yo, that shit is crazy, right?" And it just became what it is now. ... On that record, he wrote my lines and I wrote his—actually, we wrote our own lines, and when we recorded, we traded. That's why the whole back and forth, you know what I mean?[2]
| Chart (1994) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| UK Club Chart (Music Week)[3] | 55 |
| USBillboard Hot 100[4] | 65 |
| USDance Singles Sales (Billboard)[5] | 2 |
| USHot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs (Billboard)[6] | 38 |
| USHot Rap Songs (Billboard)[7] | 13 |
| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom (BPI)[8] | Silver | 200,000‡ |
|
‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. | ||
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